I remember watching and delighting in the antics of Henry Winkler’s Fonzie and his buddies during the eleven-year run (1974-1984) of Happy Days. These were for me in many ways tough days, but the show always managed to cheer me up. Plus it was a good opportunity to watch it with my wife and two daughters. By the time Happy Days left the air and went into reruns, my older daughter, Marianna, was 18 and her younger sister, Christine, 13.

I just got off the phone with my older (and only) sister, Natalie. She was born in 1931. At her next birthday, on March 4th, approximately five months from now, she’ll turn 95. After a relatively recent operation to mend her fall-induced broken hip, she had to give up her long-time apartment where she had been living independently and move into a nearby assisted-living facility in southeast Florida area. Unlike many of her age-mates, however, she’s still mentally sharp. I believe that came as reward for the fourteen years she’d lived with and took care of our mother who had recently entered dementia. That wasn’t an easy job, although Mother gratefully became docile and child-like, not given to fits of rebellion, paranoia, and violence. I wonder if the Universe has sent my sister a kind of thank-you note in the form of long-term protection against senior dementia...

Well, besides that one—the only one I’ve actually been to—there is a New Hope, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis; a New Hope, New York; and Texas alone boasts five townships in the state so named, among a number of others elsewhere. Online, moreover, I found an article which declared the Pennsylvania version one of the fifteen best American small towns to live in. So, why all these New Hopes? My theory is as the Western Hemisphere’s Promised Land, the British North American colonies and later the United States, at least for non-Iberian Europeans and in time Asians, were seen as a place to get away from poverty and/or oppression back home and to start over with a chance to own land and move up the ladder socially and economically. It was the land of what became known as the American Dream, with opportunity for those willing and able to work hard...

​In the old days—hey, I’m almost 86; I can talk about old days—we would watch weekly sitcoms on trusty ABC, CBS, or NBC. Things like I Love Lucy, Mork and Mindy, and the Golden Girls were what we and most of our neighbors watched. Of course, we also took in such seasonal perennials as pro-football, pro-basketball, and pro-baseball. We had our individual favorites, both teams and stars: Go Bears! Yay, Willie! Then there was Sunday evening with Ed Sullivan, whom my Orthodox Jewish grandmother always referred to as “Mr. Soloman.” Why, my late wife and I were even “there” for the historic appearance of the Beatles on his show. 

Maybe it was because, in my marathon to a doctorate in English Literature, I had to read so many, mainly long, novels. Whatever the case, once I had achieved my academic goal, I generally read non-fiction in my spare time. Cedar, my wife, on the other hand, reads mainly novels, with non-fiction the rare exception. (Now for example she is about to spend time with Robert Reich’s memoir.) So it took some cajoling on her part to get me to make the fictional journey to Three Pines, the imaginary village south of Montreal that is the brainchild of bestselling Canadian author Louise Penny. But once I discovered the place with its repertory company of characters, both Francophone and Anglophone, I was hooked and am now on my fourth of the (currently) 20 novels in the series. The protagonist of all of them is Armand Gamache, in most of the books described as the Chief Detective Inspector of the Sureté de Québec’s Homicide Division, though he receives several promotions as the series goes on. Generally, his sidekick is Detective Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who in time becomes his son-in-law. They are both assisted by the steady, reliable Detective Lacoste, a woman who later becomes Chief Inspector.

week ago at the time of this writing, my wife and I returned from a 12-day trip to Spain. More about that later. My first visit to the country occurred in January 1959. At the time I had recently turned 19 and had joined my German-Dutch Heidelberg student friend, Hans, who was going to Spain to improve his Spanish. Hans was studying at the Heidelberg Interpreters Institute. His languages were English and Spanish. Later he would work for many years as a simultaneous interpreter for the European Union. Alas, he died too young. From my perspective, his English and Spanish were already excellent. During academic year 1958=59 I was spending my junior year as a Yale-Heidelberg exchange scholar. My Yale advisor had made it clear to me that just by spending 12 months in Europe I would doubtless get more learning than from two academic semesters in New Haven. Of course, I didn’t totally believe him, so I kept a daily journal in English, German, and French and did attend my classes. Nonetheless, I felt free to travel—something with my $200 (US) a month back then I could well afford to do. Hans and I found a super-cheap room to rent near the Plaza Santa Ana in Madrid. There was a lot of night-time activity, however, and we soon discovered that we were staying in an unused space in a local bordello. So much for learning. I stayed on for a month and improved my prep-school Spanish a good bit. We carefully kept ourselves away from the other activities in our living quarters.

The two praiseworthy things I remember from Donald Trump’s first term are Operation Warp Speed that brought us the Covid vaccine and the Abraham Accords. I haven’t had much to praise in Trump 2 except his 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which has gotten the Israeli military to stop its military campaign (for now) and Hamas to return the 20 living Israeli hostages and, as of today (10/15/2025), the remains of eight others, with more being searched for, in some cases under the rubble. Israel, meanwhile, has returned some 2,000 Palestinian captives to Gaza. Now, as Fareed Zakaria and other commentators have stated, comes the hard parts in the next 19 steps. With not all the remains of dead Israeli hostages returned to Israel, the Netanyahu government is threatening to halve the number of aide trucks permitted to enter the strip. Oh my!

​What you can conclude from my title is that I am not a “true believer,” that is, someone who accepts every word of the Bible as the “inerrant word of God.” Rather, I’m someone who considers the Bible as the fallible work of individuals from specific times and cultures whose understandings reflect those of their ethnic groups and contemporaries. Moreover, as a Yale-trained literary analyst with a doctorate in English language and literature, I am an experienced critic of all sorts of literature, sacred and profane. Finally, when it comes to the Bible, I have read it a number of times, both on my own, and in three separate programs: The Lutheran Church’s three-year Bethel Bible Program, the first two years of the four-year Episcopalian Education for Ministry, and, most recently, the Episcopal Church’s Bible Challenge: Read the Bible in a Year, which I just finished two hours ago.

​Occasionally I dedicate these weekly blogs to a special person in my life. Today is one such blog. And the person in question is the late Sister Eileen Rice, O.P., a Dominican nun who belonged to the Siena Dominicans. I first met Eileen at a small, invitational academic conference known as the Shakertown Conversations on General Education. I’d read about this annual meeting after its first offering in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, our trade newspaper. It brought together educators from around the country who had a special interest in generally educating undergraduate college students and who wanted to discuss with colleagues how, in an age of specialization, to do that better. The setting was a restored Shaker village an hour outside of Lexington, Kentucky. This interpretive museum was staffed by costumed actors who demonstrated the arts and crafts of a 19th-century Shaker community. It was our good fortune that Shakertown housed and fed small groups such as ours with delicious home-grown or prepared-from-scratch meals and placed us in delightful single rooms, bright from their large windows, with Shaker chairs hung on wall pegs and refurbished original furniture...

In my nearly 86 years on the Planet, I’ve been blessed by close encounters with some real characters. The one I want to introduce you to today is amongst the most memorable: one Francis von Kahler. A half-Jewish Austrian baron who grew up in the north German port city of Hamburg, where his father was the Austrian trade representative, Francis had a quirky dry sense of humor typical of Northwest Europe, known to people of my generation in the person of the Danish comedian Victor Borge. Since, per the Nuremberg Accords, a Jew was anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, Francis, who had two of them, was smart enough to emigrate from Germany in 1935, when doing so was still possible. Consequently, he arrived in New York City during FDR’s first Presidential term. He said he was honored to have been officially greeted by the President himself during one of the latter’s fireside radio talks, which FDR always began by saying “Dear Friends.” Francis of course heard that as “Dear Franz,” his German name. My elderly friend did have some trouble eating in America, though. He would go to a café for lunch and sit at the counter. When the server asked him, “Hamburger?,” he would immediately answer “Ja!” He was surprised and pleased that the man knew where he was from. “And you know,” he told me, “for my initial two weeks in America, all I ate for lunch was beef patties...

When we think of witches, we tend to think of such characteristics as old, ugly, and bad. After all, ours is the country of the Salem witch burnings. Just out of curiosity, I asked Google approximately how many witches were actually burned in that series of events. Its answer: 19. However, my research revealed that none was in fact burned at the stake. The punishment for witchcraft in colonial New England in accordance with the contemporary English law of the time was hanging. In addition, at least five more people died in jail as they awaited their trial. One of my wife’s New England ancestors was to be tried as a witch, but thankfully, her husband stuck up for her, and her case never came to trial—or so the family story goes...

A Feldman likes churches? The architecture maybe. Okay, for those of you who don’t know my checkered religious past, here’s a quick update. I was born into a secular American Jewish family. My dad, rebelling against his strong Orthodox Jewish mother and her strict upbringing, turned his back on Judaism as an adult. He respected others who were religious, but religion was not for him. My mother who grew up one of eleven kids in a Jewish agricultural community in southern New Jersey was, like her siblings, not religious. Both young adults in the Great Depression, they had a primary regard for secular values like making a good living, maintaining a good reputation, and being good parents.

​I had arrived in Germany three months earlier, in July, 1958, a mere 13 years after the end of World War II. I was an 18-year-old Yale undergraduate spending my junior year as an exchange student at Heidelberg University. On this cold, dark October day, my fellow exchange student, Douglas, and I had taken the local train from Munich to the artists’ colony of Dachau. Of course, that’s not how the rest of the world thought of that town. Instead, it was known as the site of an infamous Nazi concentration camp. It was in fact the first. It was also our goal that day.

​A very interesting academic colleague of mine was named Harold Taylor (d.1993 at age 78). Back in the day his tagline was often “the former president of Sarah Lawrence College,” a school in the New York City near-north suburb of Bronxville. In 1945 when he became president of that college, known at the time as Sarah Lawrence College for Women, he was the youngest president of any college or university in the country. A Canadian by birth, he championed academic freedom and was in the forefront of challenging Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the latter’s national witch hunt of supposed Communists. Taylor also oversaw the transition of Sarah Lawrence into a co-ed institution. In 1959, after 14 years in office, he resigned his presidency. Then, ten years later he published the book that caught my attention: The World as Teacher. This he followed up by founding in the 1970s The United States Committee for the United Nations University. He then developed and led a summer program with youth representatives from 23 UN member countries to pilot such a program. My personal relationship with him led me as Academic Vice President of Metropolitan State University, Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the late 1980s and early 90s to invite him to lead a faculty-development effort with the full faculty of my university.

​The wonders of Nature are the wonders of Nature. I suppose they are not wonders to themselves. They’re just doing their everyday thing. They can be wonders to us if, as Jesus likes to say, we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. From time to time in the past, I have had my momentary oohs and aahs. But now, as I quickly approach my 85th birthday and my prospects of seeing those wonders for an open-ended time have become more consciously limited, I am paying more attention to what’s out there. And perhaps even more incredible than those things of natural beauty and competence themselves is my recurring question: How do they know how to do the breathtaking things they do?

It’s a good three months since Passover 2025. (The year is different, to be sure, in the Jewish calendar.) None the less, I just ate most of my last Passover matzah today, near the end of July. Every spring our Safeway lays in its annual supply of matzos for the local Jewish community, and every year I buy a slender box of the special kosher matzos baked in Israel especially for the holiday celebrating our successful escape from slavery in Egypt. Although distributed by the 137-year-old Manischewitz Company of Bayonne New Jersey, the box proudly announces in bold print that the contents are the “Product of Israel.”

​Some of you may know that this is the title of a four-novel series by the early-20th-century German author Thomas Mann. Written between 1933-43, it retells and significantly enlarges the Old Testament story. Even in the Bible, however, it ranks as one of the longest stories, running from Genesis chapter 37 to 50. Moreover, it concludes the first book of the Torah/Old Testament. Ironically so, because the happy outcome of this tale immediately precedes the beginning of Exodus, the Torah’s second book, which tells of a time when the Egyptian Pharaohs no longer remembered Joseph and his distinguished place in their national history. The Jewish people were now enslaved, requiring Moses with God’s miraculous help to lead his fellow Jews out of Egypt and, 40 years later, into the Promised Land.

​I’ve maintained a lifelong bad habit of considering—and of sometimes referring to others—as stupid. I’ve been through the New Testament enough to know that such behavior is considered a major sin. Still, as an educationally certified smartie, I have continued this bad habit into my 80’s. Most recently, I’ve referred to President Trump’s MAGA base as a bunch of dummies. I ask my friends things like How can they be so stupid as to have re-elected a national leader who will do nice things for his fellow richies, largely at the expense of his supporters?

​Some of my friends and acquaintances think of me as Steve Feldman, Jew. Others as Reynold Feldman, Lutheran. Still others as Reynold Feldman, Roman Catholic. Finally, for the last 15 years it would be Ren Feldman, Episcopalian. Beside all that, I am technically a Muslim and have spent time or attended more than one service as a Hindu, a Buddhist, and have immersed myself in the teachings of Confucianism and Taoism. So much for “all my religions.” But how do I think of myself? As Reynold Ruslan Feldman, AKA Ren. My birth name was Stephen Michael Feldman. In 1965, at age 26, I became Reynold Feldman, my baptismal name as of March 4, 1967 and my legal name beginning sometime in 1968. You’ll learn why shortly. But other than names, how do I think of myself? As an aging child of the Great Life Force, generally known as God, who is forced to grow older physically but, thanks to a particular spiritual path which I’ll talk about now, is trying to do so spiritually as well. The Holy Spirit, which I believe can be contacted through this exercise, guides us in our inner development so that in our twice-weekly group exercises, we meet WE. We simply need to surrender to this gentle but strong Force.

Every year Cedar, my wife, and I tend to celebrate the changes of the seasons at Tinaja Ridge, a piece of wild nature 7,200 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Solstice 2025 was no exception. Tinaja by the way is the Spanish word for a large pitcher. It’s not a Spanish 101 word. I had to look it up in my Spanish-English dictionary. And I have no idea why the ridge is so named. One of these visits I’ll ask. Anyway, this eight-acre lot is owned by Gene and Lauren, a married couple with degrees in nature education. They use the land and the adjoining national forest to give one-day and multi-week programs to us over-civilized creatures to reacquaint us with our more-than-human relatives and to help us learn from them.

In the one-day experiences at the Ridge, our leaders give us two opportunities for solo wanders in the high woods. They share whistles with us to wear around our necks in case we run into trouble, get lost, hurt ourselves, or meet a scary resident of the area. “Three short blasts—pause—three short blasts, etc.” until someone else comes to help us...

Every year Cedar, my wife, and I tend to celebrate the changes of the seasons at Tinaja Ridge, a piece of wild nature 7,200 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Solstice 2025 was no exception. Tinaja by the way is the Spanish word for a large pitcher. It’s not a Spanish 101 word. I had to look it up in my Spanish-English dictionary. And I have no idea why the ridge is so named. One of these visits I’ll ask. Anyway, this eight-acre lot is owned by Gene and Lauren, a married couple with degrees in nature education. They use the land and the adjoining national forest to give one-day and multi-week programs to us over-civilized creatures to reacquaint us with our more-than-human relatives and to help us learn from them.
​
On this particular one-day session, as I was hiking up the hill to where we circle up to start our 10-to-4 day, I felt more exhausted than usual. I wasn’t out of breath but clearly felt the stain of this fifty-yard walk more than usual, even more, it seems, than a few months earlier for our Tinaja Ridge spring-equinox experience...

​Every year Cedar, my wife, and I tend to celebrate the changes of the seasons at Tinaja Ridge, a piece of wild nature 7,200 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Solstice 2025 was no exception. Tinaja by the way is the Spanish word for a large pitcher. It’s not a Spanish 101 word. I had to look it up in my Spanish-English dictionary. And I have no idea why the ridge is so named. One of these visits I’ll ask. Anyway, this eight-acre lot is owned by Gene and Lauren, a married couple with degrees in nature education. They use the land and the adjoining national forest to give one-day and multi-week programs to us over-civilized creatures to reacquaint us with our more-than-human relatives and to help us learn from them.

Every year Cedar, my wife, and I tend to celebrate the changes of the seasons at Tinaja Ridge, a piece of wild nature 7,200 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Solstice 2025 was no exception. Tinaja by the way is the Spanish word for a large pitcher. It’s not a Spanish 101 word. I had to look it up in my Spanish-English dictionary. And I have no idea why the ridge is so named. One of these visits I’ll ask. Anyway, this eight-acre lot is owned by Gene and Lauren, a married couple with degrees in nature education. They use the land and the adjoining national forest to give one-day and multi-week programs to us over-civilized creatures to reacquaint us with our more-than-human relatives and to help us learn from them.
​
On this particular one-day session, Gene shared with us that the cicadas, some underground for as much as 17 years, were boring their way up to the surface, leaving their shells, in some cases changing color, then flexing their wings and starting to fly. Here is a little poem I wrote in commemoration of these events, some of which we witnessed.
​

​Coming-Out Party

We’d just heard a lovely poem
About a skin-shedding snake,
Out on a ridge where snakes actually live.
Then one of our outdoor minyan shouted,
“Look!”
A cicada newly de Profundis
Was shedding its shell.
Now we all have our own shells to shed.
Our lives in the Upper World depend on it,
Or anyway, our ability to fly.
Maybe now’s our time.
​
Voyons!

​I live in Boulder, Colorado. Four days ago near our courthouse, an Egyptian man using homemade Molotov cocktails and gasoline in a weed sprayer attacked a group of quiet protesters supporting release of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Fortunately none of the victims died, although two of the 12 burn victims are still being treated in the hospital. Meanwhile, Gaza has been reduced to rubble, 50,000 inhabitants, many civilian women and children, have been killed, and the remaining population is suffering from famine...

This morning, June 6, 2025, I received word that a longtime member of our Friday-morning men’s group had passed away. He was just a few weeks before his 86th birthday. I wasn’t surprised, since he had been failing for the last few years. But what made his death more tragic, if I can use that word, was the death a few weeks earlier of his son Mike. I’ll be going to the  Celebration of Life honoring both father and son this coming Father’s Day Sunday, June 15th.
​
At 85 ½ I am now the oldest member of our group. Most of the other men are in their 70s, with our “baby” in his late 60s. So the image of the three-meter diving board comes to mind. The person at the end is, metaphorically, the next to take the trip into the Great Unknown. Meanwhile, at a certain age we begin to place ourselves on the steps going up to the board, where the Angel of Death greets each new arrival with the word “Next!” Oy!...